If Republicans got their way, women like
Daniela would be stuck in a perpetual cycle of near-poverty, with
limited options to get a better education and climb out of the economic
rut that bad chance — or perhaps parents going through the same cycle —
has put them in.

Daniela is not a real person, but the
hypothetical low-income Cincinnati woman of the future exemplifies where
Republican policies are taking Ohio and the rest of the nation.

Daniela is born today to a low-income
family in Cincinnati. With her birth, her family can expect some welfare
and health care benefits, including Medicaid, because of previously
established state eligibility rules.

But the chances of publicly funded
preschool are pretty grim. Because of across-the-board spending cuts at
the federal level that Republicans kept in place despite calls for
repeal from Democrats, the Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action
Agency plans to carry out $1 million in cuts by dropping hundreds of
kids from the Head Start program. For families like Daniela’s, that
makes preschool and other early education programs even less affordable
and more inaccessible.

Once Daniela is old enough for
kindergarten, she can expect a lower quality education across the board
as Cincinnati Public Schools deals with $15 million less state funding
than it received in 2009. That’s because the funding increases in the
current 2014-2015 budget aren’t enough to make up for cuts in the
2012-2013 state budget.

When she comes of age, Daniela is going
to have an even more difficult time if she becomes sexually active. Not
only did Republicans deprioritize funding for abortion clinics in the
latest state budget, the budget’s changes are also defunding clinics
that only provide access to contraceptive care — birth control pills,
condoms and pregnancy screenings — but no abortion services.

So if Daniela becomes sexually active,
she’ll likely have to pay for her own birth control and screenings if
her parents are still among the 1.6 million Ohioans who were reportedly
uninsured in 2010.

If she gets pregnant, it’s going to be a lot more
difficult for her to choose to terminate the pregnancy before she places
another child in her own dire economic situation.

Despite the circumstances, Daniela
graduates high school and grows up. She works, but her annual pay isn’t
low enough to qualify for Medicaid — if only Ohio Republicans had
expanded Medicaid to cover single earners making $15,856 or less — or
high enough to buy a health plan through the insurance exchanges set up
by the federal Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”).

Still, Daniela wouldn’t be able to expect
much in the way of tax relief from the current state budget plan. An
analysis from left-leaning think tank Policy Matters Ohio shows her
taxes going up by $12 once a higher sales tax outweighs her slightly
lower income taxes. Instead, the tax cuts are going mostly to Ohio’s
wealthiest — a disproportional benefit Gov. John Kasich defended by
using the classic “job creators” line.

Daniela probably appreciates that her
boss is making more money, but she likely also realizes that the couple
hundred bucks from the budget’s small business tax cut aren’t enough for
her boss to hire a full-time or even part-time employee.

Given all of the problems, Daniela might
feel compelled to vote against the politicians who helped bring her to
this point, but even that would be more difficult in the Republicans’
ideal world. Since Daniela works hard and lives paycheck to paycheck,
she doesn’t have much in the way of free time during the weekdays. When
election time comes around, it’s very difficult or even impossible for
her to make the trip to a polling booth.

It would be much easier for Daniela to
vote during the weekend — something many Ohio counties plentifully
allowed in the past — but Republicans in the state legislature and Jon
Husted, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, have tried their best to
do away with that.

But if Daniela does make it to the voting
booth, she might not be in the clear. State Republicans still want to
enforce strict voter ID standards — a measure that would hurt young
minorities like Daniela the most, according to a study from professors
at the University of Chicago and Washington University in St. Louis.

In effect, Republican policies will make
it more difficult for Daniela to climb out of her dire economic
situation. If she gets pregnant, chances are her baby will be stuck in
the same economic malaise. And if she wants to vote for policy changes
to improve her situation, Republicans are aiming to make even her most
basic right more difficult to execute.

Again, Daniela is not a real person. But do Ohioans want to live in a state where she’s such a real possibility?